November 21, 2004: Headlines: COS - Peru: Cleveland Plain Dealer: Michael Porath says: When I was a kid, Cusco, Peru, was the most exotic place I could imagine. Before I was born, my father served in the Peace Corps in the jungles near Cusco. The spears, slides and stories he returned with kept my siblings and me captivated for years.

Peace Corps Online: Directory: Peru: Peace Corps Peru: The Peace Corps in Peru: November 21, 2004: Headlines: COS - Peru: Cleveland Plain Dealer: Michael Porath says: When I was a kid, Cusco, Peru, was the most exotic place I could imagine. Before I was born, my father served in the Peace Corps in the jungles near Cusco. The spears, slides and stories he returned with kept my siblings and me captivated for years.

By Admin1 (admin) (pool-151-196-36-89.balt.east.verizon.net - 151.196.36.89) on Saturday, November 27, 2004 - 7:22 pm: Edit Post

Michael Porath says: When I was a kid, Cusco, Peru, was the most exotic place I could imagine. Before I was born, my father served in the Peace Corps in the jungles near Cusco. The spears, slides and stories he returned with kept my siblings and me captivated for years.

Michael Porath says: When I was a kid, Cusco, Peru, was the most exotic place I could imagine. Before I was born, my father served in the Peace Corps in the jungles near Cusco. The spears, slides and stories he returned with kept my siblings and me captivated for years.

Michael Porath says: When I was a kid, Cusco, Peru, was the most exotic place I could imagine. Before I was born, my father served in the Peace Corps in the jungles near Cusco. The spears, slides and stories he returned with kept my siblings and me captivated for years.

On the road to Machu Picchu
The long hike to Peruvian treasure is half the pleasure
Sunday, November 21, 2004
Michael Porath
Special to The Plain Dealer

When I was a kid, Cusco, Peru, was the most exotic place I could imagine. Before I was born, my father served in the Peace Corps in the jungles near Cusco. The spears, slides and stories he returned with kept my siblings and me captivated for years.

I remember taking the 6-foot-long spears to my second-grade class for show-and-tell and explaining the story of how my dad slept under a broken- down truck in the middle of the jungle one night while he listened to distant tribal drumbeats, praying he would not wake up with a shrunken head.

In the fourth grade, I wrote my history report on Machu Picchu, the Lost City of the Incas, discovered near Cusco by an American from Yale University, Hiram Bingham, in 1911 (though local farmers had known about it for years). A military takeover forced my dad to leave Peru after just a few months, so he never had a chance to visit this incredible place.
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Present-day Cusco is certainly a different city than it was in 1968. Largely because of Machu Picchu's rising popularity, Cusco has become the "Gringo capital" of South America. Once the capital of the Inca empire - and amazingly built in the shape of a puma - the city has retained its identity despite the flood of tourism, mainly because the original Inca walls that lined Cusco's winding cobblestone streets hundreds of years ago house its restaurants and bars today.

Even the Spanish conquistadors, who could not improve on the architectural stonework, built on top of much of the Inca foundation rather than destroy it.

Just a few years ago, travelers could hike alone along the trails the Incas built into the mountainside to Machu Picchu. The Peruvian government, however, has restricted backpackers to traveling in guided tours. Sarah and I booked a tour with Andean Life, one of several companies that leads groups along the 30-mile trail that climbs through cloud forests to almost 14,000 feet.

The $270-per-person fee included four days and three nights of meals, tents, the park entry charge and a train back to Cusco. Our group of 14 was a fun-loving bunch that was lucky to land Carlos Vasquez as our guide.

Just as we prepared to begin, a train carrying passengers to Machu Picchu passed us, which brought to mind a fundamental question: Why were we paying $270 to walk four days when a train and bus could get us there in two hours for $30?

One hour into the hike, we had our answer: Walking along the same path the Incas had built more than 500 years earlier while watching snow-capped mountains drift in and out of the clouds was a beautiful and awe- inspiring experience.

At the first ruins we encountered, Carlos explained three theories about why Machu Picchu and the surrounding areas were abandoned by the Incas, an advanced civilization that astonishingly conquered almost the entire western side of South America in the 15th century:

1. Christopher Columbus brought with him syphilis, an epidemic that spared few.

2. The Spanish conquistadors killed everyone.

3. The Incas fled just before the conquistadors arrived.

Given that Bingham found remains of only 173 bodies, nearly all of them women, Carlos said he believed the theory that the Incas fled to Vilcabamba, another nearby mountain village.

When he gathered us at dinner and explained that the next day we would be climbing 4,000 feet in the wind and rain, we considered fleeing as well. Until he said: "Everyone will make it. Those you see turning back are losers." Fear has a way of making people listen. Sarah's good sense won over my stubbornness, and we decided to give my 25-pound sack to a porter while I carried Sarah's smaller pack.

Halfway through our long slog up, however, I was embarrassed to discover that the local villager I had hired was not carrying my backpack, his 17-year-old daughter was. The other American in our group thought this was very funny until he realized her younger sister was carrying his.

We had forgotten all of this by the top of the second pass, instead concentrating on sucking enough air into our lungs to take another step. Even the porters, their mouths full of cocoa leaves, struggled at this altitude.

Once over the pass, the cold wind and rain kicked in, turning our knuckles purple while our knees wobbled down the three- hour, mile-high descent. By the time we reached camp, we were tired old dogs ready to sleep.

But even this was not easy, because as the sun went down, the temperature dropped to freezing. Sarah, whose blood circulates around her body about once every leap year, put on every piece of clothing she had, along with most of mine, and burrowed into her sleeping bag.

The third day was actually longer, but comparatively speaking, it was easier, even with my big backpack once again strap ped over my shoulders. After a tough morning climb, it was mostly downhill, or more accurately, down steps, nearly 2,000 stone stairs built into the mountainside. Although the misty clouds blocked our view much of the day, they cleared often enough to remind us of the spectacular beauty.

By 7 the next morning, we were staring over Machu Picchu, a stunning city of stone built into the Andes along mountainside terraces. As Carlos led us through the Inca temples, he ex plained more theories about the city's use, the most plausible being that it was a kind of university, with areas for priests, royalty, agriculture and astrology.

The stonework is so exact that it has held over centuries of earthquakes and fierce mountain weather. It is easy to spot the few restorations because they pale in comparison to the precision of the original Inca architecture.

Stories of Cusco and Machu Picchu now will continue for another generation in our family.

We are not the only ones. Re markably, when we reached the ancient city's peak, two men in our group surprised their girlfriends, not to mention each other, and made Machu Picchu part of their own history by dropping to a knee and proposing marriage.

The Poraths hope that readers will join them on their adventure, reported periodically in the Travel section on Sunday. Thoughts? Suggestions? You can e-mail them at mikeporath@hotmail.com and sarahporath@hotmail.com.


© 2004 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.





When this story was posted in November 2004, this was on the front page of PCOL:

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Story Source: Cleveland Plain Dealer

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